Down to Earth

by Rhonda Hetzel

  Menu planning

  One smart way to cut down on food waste and save time and anxiety is to plan your daily menus a week in advance. Menu planning is not for everyone. When we’re fully stocked up in the stockpile cupboard and garden, I don’t plan my menus. I take each day as it comes and decide after lunch what we’ll eat, according to what the day has been like, how tired I am and which ingredients are available. Some people living close to shops prefer to shop for fresh food daily and others go in and out of menu planning at various stages of life. Generally, though, menu planning will save you time, effort and money. If you haven’t tried it yet, give it a go.

  A menu plan is a list of predetermined meals you’ll cook fresh, cook and freeze, or have the ingredients for at home. They’re a bit like budgets: they help you look at your resources in a way that cuts down or eliminates waste, and use what you have to get the best value for your dollar.

  When you do your plan, it’s wise to include all main meals, lunches and snacks, but main meals and work/school lunches are a good start. If you alternate between eating cereal, porridge, eggs, toast and tea or coffee for breakfast, all you need do is make sure you have those ingredients covered in your shopping and you’ll have breakfasts taken care of. If you serve larger breakfasts with varied ingredients, each breakfast should be included in your menu plan.

  Menu planning will save you time, effort and money. If you haven’t tried it yet, give it a go.

  Menu plans will be different for singles and couples and for families. Singles and couples will have a more spontaneous way of planning – perhaps by not tying down a meal to a specific day, and by leaving room for last-minute invitations. A family plan will need to be more structured, probably with more cook-once, eat-twice meals, variations of meals if there are special diets in the family and creative ways of dealing with leftovers. I encourage you to think about how you buy, cook and store your food and to plan your menus in a way that suits you and your circumstances.

  Like most things we do in this simple life, organisation is the key. When you start menu planning, start with your favourite easy meals, then go through recipe books or search online to create a list of recipes that you can cook easily and will satisfy you and your family. Don’t forget to include seasonal meals in your weekly plans to take advantage of the fresh food you’ll find as the year progresses, as it will be cheaper, fresher and at its prime. If you can invest thirty minutes of your time to make up a menu plan for a week, you’ll be on the road to simplifying your food and cutting down the time it takes to shop and prepare it.

  Keep your weekly meal plans in a folder when you finish with them because they will be the foundation of a monthly meal plan you can work towards. When you have several months’ worth of different plans that work with seasonal foods available in your area or your backyard, you’ll have a wonderful resource to help you plan your cooking and shopping throughout the year.

  How to plan your menus

  Start by checking your calendar to see what special days are coming up. You might also have days when you eat at your parents’ or a friend’s home and have them at yours. Mark those days on your menu plan. Then ask your family what they’d like, check what you have in the garden, freezer and stockpile that needs to be eaten, and look at the weekly flyers when they’re delivered to see what food is on special. Know what fruits and vegetables are in season and make a place for them in your plan. Finally, when you go to the markets or shops, be flexible enough to include anything you find that is a real bargain, just coming into season or something new you want to try. The aim here is not only to provide an organising framework to your meals, but also to eat fresh, nutritious food that is not too expensive.

  If you don’t stockpile, and instead shop for groceries on a weekly basis, start off your menu planning by using what you already have in the kitchen. Check your fridge and pantry for what food is available to work with. Don’t forget to include whatever you’re growing in the backyard. Many meals have been made here just from our backyard: herb omelettes, eggs with curried vegetables, and tomato and vegetable soups.

  You might want to do your shopping first and buy only what looks fresh and delicious, then work out your menu plan from that. Or you might decide to do a mix of both by deciding on certain recipes that you’re sure you’ll cook, then supplementing them with whatever is appealing at the market and looking for recipes for those ingredients when you return. Whatever way works best for you is what you should stick with.

  Make sure you understand the principles of good nutrition and be guided by your common sense. If you need to read about nutrition and the food groups, do that before you start and build your menu plan on that knowledge. The Dieticians Association of Australia’s website (daa.asn.au) has some good information, recipes and tips. Be mindful of the different requirements for adults, children, adolescents, pregnant and breastfeeding women and the elderly. The differences are not great, but they’re important, and you should know about them if you’re the main provider of food in your family. Don’t be afraid to try new foods and give yourself a lot of variety.

  If you plan before you buy, it’s just a matter of marking up a sheet of paper with each day’s meals on it. Make room on the sheet for a shopping list and if there’s an ingredient you need but don’t have, mark it on the shopping list. You’ll save time and money if you cook double the quantity – cook once, eat twice. For instance, when I cook tuna and pasta bake, it serves four. We eat it two nights in a row, the second night being the best as the flavours have had time to develop. Or you can freeze leftovers that have a high liquid component, like soup, pasta sauces, casseroles, roast with gravy, curries and many other dishes. The meal takes the same amount of time to prepare but the second night you save on preparation time and energy bills by just using enough energy to reheat the food.

  Sample meal plan

  Food is usually a never-ending expense in the household budget. If you can save money on food, you’ll generally save big money over the course of your life. It makes sense that you look for bargains, buy local and get the freshest food available, and you should also store your food so it doesn’t deteriorate before you eat it. This is an important subject because food needs to be healthy and safe every time you eat it. One of your jobs as a homemaker or provider of food is to learn about how to safely store food in the way that’s most suited to your climate and way of living.

  Stockpiling

  If you’re driving to the shops a few times a week to buy a few items, now is a good time to rethink your strategy. You’re using more fuel than you need to, and adding to the emissions already attached to the items you buy. If you would love to have a little shop close by, where you could find all those things you forgot to buy and where items are always on sale, create that store for yourself in your own home. That is what a stockpile is: your own open-all-hours convenience store offering the best prices.

  The main idea behind stockpiling is that you work out what you usually eat and use in your home and, over time, buy those things that can be stored safely in a cupboard or freezer when they’re on sale, storing them in a separate area.

  A stockpile is your own open-all-hours convenience store offering the best prices.

  To start a stockpile from scratch, your first step is to work out what you need to store. The easy, non-food things to think of are soap, toilet paper, tissues, toothpaste, toothbrushes and cleaning products. If you make your own cleaners, you’ll need baking soda, white vinegar, borax, washing soda and laundry soap.

  Then work out your food list. The key to a successful stockpile is to include only what you know you’ll eat and will use. There is absolutely no use in buying and stockpiling a great bargain if you don’t eat it or use it in some way.

  If you bake bread, include bread flour, seeds and yeast; if you bake cakes and biscuits, include things like sultanas, dates, brown sugar, cocoa, choc chips and nuts. Also make room for baked beans, dried beans, tinned salmon and tuna, honey, tea, co
ffee, milk powder, Vegemite, peanut butter, olive oil, vinegar, seasonings, dried pasta, sugar, salt, pepper and spices. We buy olive oil and rice bran oil for cooking and soap making in 4-litre tins when it’s on sale. We always have powdered milk in the cupboard as well and I usually cook with it instead of using fresh milk. Powered milk is bought in a 1-kilogram foil bag and stored in a glass jar when opened.

  When you know what you need to buy, work out where you will store your food. If you’re like me, you’ll have a few different spaces. I have a pantry and two stockpile cupboards. The pantry is where I keep everything I am currently using – the things that are open and being used regularly. My pantry is in the kitchen. The stockpile cupboard contains unopened items that are being stored for future use. I have one food stockpile cupboard near the kitchen and another, containing toiletries and laundry products, in the second bathroom. As you can see, stockpiling is an organic thing that tends to fit in wherever you have space. Don’t be afraid to store your stockpiled goods in the bedroom or garage if you have no room near your kitchen. Your pantry needs to be in the kitchen because you’re using those foods every day, but the stockpile can be anywhere in the house or garage.

  STOCKPILING BENEFITS

  You’ll shop monthly instead of weekly, saving all that time you now spend on grocer y shopping. When your stockpile is fully operational, you’ll only need to top it up and buy the fresh foods like milk, meat, fruit and vegetables.

  You’ll save money because much of what is in your stockpile cupboard will be bought in bulk and on sale.

  If there’s an unusual family situation – you are sick, your partner is out of work, your children need much more of your time for school projects or sports, you’ll know you can still feed everyone with what’s already in your home, sitting in the stockpile cupboard.

  If there is an emergency (floods, cyclones, bushfires) you won’t need to go out as you’ll have all your provisions safely stored at home.

  When you buy dried goods like bread flour, self-raising flour, nuts, seeds, pasta, corn flour, lentils and rice, it’s a good idea to put them in your freezer for a few days to kill off any bug larvae that happen to be in there. It’s horrible to think they are there, but they usually are. If you’ve ever wondered how weevils or pantry moths can hatch out in a sealed container, it’s because the larvae were in the product when you bought it. Freezing will kill them.

  When you have your stockpile working well, make sure you look after it. Check there are no rodents, bugs or water that could ruin your food. Add new food at the back and always take from the front, as that will rotate your stock. Every so often, go through your stockpile to make sure everything is okay, that there are no moths, bugs or leaks and your home-processed food is not mouldy. If you find anything like that, empty your stockpile cupboard, wipe up any moisture, vacuum the shelves to pick up insect eggs, then wipe your shelves over with a terry cloth dipped in hot water and eucalyptus or tea-tree oil. Don’t make your solution too strong because you don’t want the smell to get into your food. You just want to deter the bugs.

  If possible, keep all your dry goods in airtight containers to protect them from bugs. Beans, chickpeas, lentils, dried fruit, salt, rice, sugar, coconut, polenta and so on are stored in the original packages in the stockpile cupboard and, when in use, transferred to a glass jar and stored in the pantry. If you don’t have storage jars, it’s a good idea to buy one every time you do your shopping.

  STORAGE CONTAINERS

  There are various concerns about plastic having contact with food and it is a good general rule to use glass for storage if you can, or food-quality plastic. I try to use glass containers for the dried goods but for the bulk amounts I use food-grade plastic. I got some food-grade, round plastic buckets for storing flour from my local baker. These are really handy, but recently I also found some Decor square buckets capable of holding 10 kilograms. Square buckets will fit in the cupboard and use the space you have more efficiently than round buckets.

  As with most things in life, you should do the best you can do and don’t stress if you can’t do what you would like to. If you can’t afford to use purpose-built glass storage jars, use food-quality plastic. If you have few containers, keep food in its package until you need to use it, and if you have no container to store it in, seal it in a plastic bag or cover it with a clean tea towel and store it in the fridge or a sealed cupboard.

  Don’t forget to add home-produced food to your stockpile as well. We often use homegrown fruit and vegetables, or cheap seasonal boxes of fruit and vegetables, to make relish, chutneys, sauces, jams, pickles and preserved fruit. All these are made to the recipes I’ve been using for years, processed in a water bath and stored for up to a year in the stockpile cupboard. When you have all this beautiful home-preserved fruit and jam, don’t be tempted to display it on your dresser or kitchen shelves. It should be kept in a dark, cool cupboard and lined up so you use the oldest first.

  Stockpiling groceries is the best way I know of to lower your food bills and it can also help you survive an emergency – both a national emergency and a personal emergency. But remember, it’s an investment and worth a lot of money; it must be looked after. If you do an audit every three months, as well as when you add new stock to your cupboard, you’ll reap all the benefits of your stockpile.

  Storing fresh fruit and vegetables

  Fresh fruit and vegetables should be stored in a few different ways.

  Potatoes and sweet potatoes should not be refrigerated. Remove them from the plastic bag, as plastic will make them sweat and they’ll rot. Check for damage – throw away any damaged or green ones, and place the good potatoes in a basket or container that allows air circulation. Store in a cool, dry, dark place.

  Onions need the same storage conditions as potatoes, but keep them in their own container in a cool, dry, dark place. Onions and potatoes each emit a gas that can cause the other to rot.

  Tomatoes tend to lose flavour in the fridge, so it’s best to place them in a bowl and keep them on the bench. They will continue to ripen and are best eaten when they’re fully ripe.

  Garlic can be stored with tomatoes on the kitchen bench.

  Citrus can be left on the bench in a bowl if they’re fresh and you’ll eat them within a week. They’ll develop their true flavour if not in the fridge. If you’re not sure how old they are, store in the fridge in the crisper.

  Bananas should be bought fresh and eaten as soon as possible. Don’t store them in the fridge as they’ll go brown. If you don’t think you’ll eat the bananas soon, put them in a plastic bag in the freezer. Do not peel – store them in the freezer as they are. Defrosted, they can be used in cakes and muffins.

  Pears should be left on the bench to ripen properly and eaten as soon as they’re ripe.

  Leafy greens are stored in the fridge. Wash, shake off the excess water and store in a plastic bag or plastic container. Clean, recycled plastic bags are perfect for this. The bags can be washed and reused many times.

  Spinach is kept unwashed in the fridge. It has a very short shelf life, so if you want to store it, it’s best to freeze it.

  Herbs should be washed and placed on a clean, moist cloth in a recycled plastic bag.

  Celery should be washed, then shake off excess water and wrap tightly in two sheets of aluminium foil. Seal it up so there’s no celery sticking out, and store in the fridge. It will stay crisp for at least two months.

  Root vegetables such as carrots, parsnips and turnips always need their green tops cut off as they will take moisture from the root. Wash, dry completely and store in a plastic container in the fridge, or wrap in foil in a similar way to celery.

  Mushrooms should not be washed, as they will absorb the water, making them difficult to cook. Place in a brown paper bag, or put them in a bowl and cover with another bowl or cotton cloth. Use within a week.

  Apples, capsicums, eggplant, beans and cucumbers all go in the crisper of the fridge.

  Rockmelon
, pawpaw, pumpkin and other similar fruit will store better in the fridge if you remove all the seeds after cutting them open.

  Peaches and nectarines can be ripened on the bench. If they’re ripe, store them in the fridge.

  Avocados can ripen on the bench. When they’re ripe, store in the fridge and eat as soon as you can.

  Nuts are placed in small jars and kept in the fridge.

  Food such as tomatoes, bananas and passionfruit do not benefit from refrigeration, and give off gasses that accelerate ripening in other fruit and vegetables, so I store them on the kitchen bench. None of them last long and they’re fine for their short life in a bowl on the bench.

  Freezing

  Freezing is an easy way of preserving food. It does not sterilise food, like a water bath or pressure canner does, but it slows down changes in food and retards the growth of microorganisms due to the extreme cold. It doesn’t require special equipment, except the freezer itself, and it doesn’t take much time. It’s much faster than using a water bath and if treated properly, the food usually retains its nutrition, texture and colour. I believe freezing is the best method of preserving food but it does cost money to keep the freezer going and you run the risk of losing the food to spoilage if your power is cut for a length of time.

  If your freezer is under a window, make sure the sun doesn’t shine on it. If sun comes through that window, put up a curtain.